Yeah, I bought a Transmitter frame for my son and it was missing a couple of cable guides. Thought it’d be easy to get fresh ones. Sent Sonder an email after asking about them on here. Two weeks later they replied basically saying ‘we’ve nothing, lolz’, then a week later followed up with a ‘how did we do?’ email.

Badly, Sonder. Badly.

Ah, no. It was addressed to them, not to me. They sent me a picture of the actual letter, not the envelope! Leaving it in my hands rather than theirs.
Still don’t like it, and suspect I’m going to ignore it.

Agree it’s maddening. If I could find a source for V8 classic end caps that’d be great. Not paying 25€ for a rebuild kit when I can regularly find the pedals for 28€. Managed to get a tub full of bearings for pennies as well, but the end caps still elude me.

It is, but it’s not in the Schengen area.

Yes. Baths are great. I don’t know if this is relevant to your decision making, but we’ve rejected out of hand houses without baths.

I think I might have been an abject failure at my last job. I still don’t know. I was there for two and a half years, never had a job description, never had any roles or responsibilities nor ever sat in any organisation structure diagram thing. No reports above or below. Had to sort all my IT out myself the first day, then spent the next month trying to find out what I was supposed to be doing and for whom. And then doing LOTS of hiding and open university type stuff. And stressing. The redundancy was an actual relief.

I’m still not at a point where I’d recommend anything other than the best three door Golf GTI you can find. In Tornado Red, obviously.

I was also one of the ‘lucky’ ones who’d avoided it for 2½ years. Until a few weeks ago, when my wife caught it. I suspect it wouldn’t have hit me quite so hard had I not spent the previous two weeks in bed or on the sofa recovering from an operation… the first two days were like that scene in Trainspotting when Renton’s going cold turkey. Probably about ten days of no energy whatsoever after that, frequent headaches and kidney pain, and ridiculous brain fog to the point where I couldn’t actually read. I’m recovering slowly now, but still tire quickly and still have a twatty cough. I’ll take a second booster if it’s offered, for sure.

Oh, and tyre clearance? I’m running 2.3s and I reckon 2.6s would still be fine. You could probably even get some 27.5x3s in there, tbh.

I love my Scandal. Like loads of the others above I’ve hooned it around as well as bikepacked on it. I think I’ve put around 6,000 km on it in the past four years. Probably more. It replaced, or more correctly reframed, an early Zaskar 29er, which was a horrible thing. It sits at the front of the garage and it gets grabbed for basically everything.
It compares favourably with the Sonder Transmitter I built for my son, but isn’t as ‘nice’ as my Ragley Piglet. The paint is slightly less chippable than M&M shells, but only slightly. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a cheap and fun bike. If it got nicked? I’d build another exactly the same.

Russian Doll series 2 felt like After Life series 3. Entirely unnecessary and trying too hard to get the C-word into Every. Single. Episode. Gave up quite quickly…

I loved that, properly subtle. Although if it was really a Twin Cam rep, it’d’ve had rectangular headlamps. Glad it didn’t.

S10e? Few years old now, so cheap. Mine’s two and half, maybe three years old now and it’s still great. Felt like the battery was getting weaker recently, but no, it’s just I’ve gotten in to Pokémon Go.

I gave up watching Behind the Curve as I couldn’t stand weaponised stupidity. It was like that Jam sketch at the impound lot, just longer and much less funny.

Those of you buying fresh barbs and olives, why? Hold the cut off end lightly with a pair of needle nosed pliers then use a lighter to soften (or just plain melt) the hose stub.

I’d stump up for fresh pads, maybe discs as well. Why? Because my twenty year old M525s are still going strong, whereas any newer Shimano brakes I’ve tried have been a microleaky, wandering bite pointy mess. Been really impressed with Magura of late.

If glitzy shopping isn’t your idea of heaven, there’s still plenty to do. It’s just not what people go there to do, if that makes sense?
The culture is really concentrated in the old part – gold and spice souks, the older museums and mosques. You won’t be woken at 5am by call to prayer on the palm. You will in the old part. You’ll also find carts selling amazing chicken or lamb shoarma, and fresh watermelon juice with ice. The air will smell of ozone and diesel. It’s great.
In the old bits you’ll be able to hire some shit car for a few Dirhams a day – guaranteed it’ll be a Nissan Tilde, and it’ll be awful. However, it’ll get you out to the robot camel racing at daybreak, and the pyramid that houses the Rainbow Sheikh’s collection of disparate vehicles.
Yes, Dubai is an absolute toilet on the surface, but scratch that surface and there’s loads to see. Enjoy.

I’m calling bullshit on that Star front page. The only demo day I’ve ever been to at Balmoral was for Santa Cruz.

Defeated, defected, or deceased.

In the best Singletrackworld.com tradition of recommending what you’ve got, it’s got to be a Ragley Piglet. Good fun set up Plus, and an absolute mad bastard of a thing when running mere 2.3s.

Ah, okay. I’ll leave well alone.

Thumb shifting up and down can die in a ditch. Slowly, being eaten alive by rats. My 2010 Foxy had X-9, and I could never quite get used to it. The one time I tried to block shift down a few gears for a climb and obviously clicked the wrong lever resulting in my bike pretty much stopping dead but me (and the bollocks connected to me) not doing so was the final straw. Pain and rage.
SRAM isn’t a deal breaker for me nowadays, but obviously I have to budget in replacing it with XT.

Intrigued by Sandman, as I’m a big fan of Gaiman’s darker stuff. I’m just worried it’s going to be like Lucifer. Heavy-handedly soft, if you know what I mean?

It’s better to go FOR something than FROM something. That said, we started looking at emigrating on the 19th of September 2014 and ended up having a move to Europe sorted in June 2016, and then had a panicked few months wondering if it would actually happen. Initially we were only supposed to be in the Netherlands for two years, and our reasoning was ‘yep, two years while we still can and before we’re deported, let’s do it’, and we threw ourselves into it. Put the kids into a local school, tried to learn as much Dutch as possible, cycled EVERYWHERE. Now you’re expecting me to say that it fell apart and we came back, tails between legs? No. It’s nearly six years now. Our kids are more Dutch than Scottish. I’ve been back across the north sea twice and every time feels worse, more alien, more cruel. I’d happily never go back. I don’t regret leaving. Not one bit.

You seen the weird new ESQ or whatever it’s called? Looks like what you’d get if you ordered an S-class off wish.com.

I’ve relayed all this to my wife, thanks guys. Cougar, am I remembering right that you’re autistic? I am too, so I appreciate the honesty. I also think you’re right.

Thank you, almost everyone, for your kind replies.

Side question, is there a ‘block user’ function here? :)

@alan1977 that was exactly the thoughtful and helpful response I was hoping for, thank you. It’s been emotional for us the last few days and we’ve had a right good talk with our sons about it all. It’s hard to think rationally when you’re close to it.

Tell you what, wait until one of your partner’s colleagues’ kids kills themselves, receive similar levels of empathy from supposed public servants, then come back and compare notes, yeah?

It’s not technically required for the Peripherique, but if there’s a diversion or Google Maps decides to shave one minute off your journey and takes you inside the A28, then it’s very much required.
It costs all of 3,41€ or something and takes literally minutes to apply for. Why would you even risk it?
Also worth knowing that it just needs to be stuck in a window, it’s not like a vignette or umweltplakette that has to be in a proscribed area of the windscreen. I’ve seen plenty of cars with them on the rear side windows or rear screen.

Mine tend to get broken down into bits as bits are easier to store than complete bikes. I hate selling stuff.

Also, agree with the posters above – I typically run 203/180 and a good few more psi. I can’t get on with low pressures at all.

I’m 6’3″ and my regular rides are a Scandal and a Piglet. Both of them were ‘as and when’ and ‘grab a bargain’ builds and I’ve snapped quite a few rear spokes on the Scandal as it’s only running 28 spokes. Never had a problem with the 32 spoke wheels on the Piglet. Drivetrain stuff I’ve never had a problem with.

I know some carbon frames have a weight limit that I could never get under unless I became long term bulimic.

That’s the big benefit for me as well – despite living here all my cars are RHD, so I’m reliant on my passenger to do the whole peage thing. And she has massive anxiety about it – even close to the kerbs it’s still a case of unclipping her seatbelt and stretching for a ticket or swiping her card. And if she dropped either? It’s never happened, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety. This way she can just sleep, I can sit at 150ish, we don’t need to stress about getting the ‘right’ lane, especially if you’ve got 100m on the other side of the toll gate to get to the offramp at the other other side, and if that costs me 1,70€ per calendar month that I’m in France? That’s an utter bargain as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve got a Mango one, but it’s purely for cars. I know that once your account is set up you can swap plates, but unsure about swapping classes. The tolls ARE different between cars and campers as well – we had to pay the small camper rate for our T4 before we had the Peage bipper.

Superdry or O’Neill.

Nobody’s mentioned series 3 of The Umbrella Academy yet? Shocking.

Lovely. I built a Piglet late last year and it is a fantastic bike. I’d say enjoy, but I know you will anyway so it seems superfluous!

When I first moved to NL, the anwb would cover foreign plated vehicles, and we had to use them twice on one trip. They would only recover as far as NL, though. Wasn’t a problem for us, and I guess it might not be for you?

I’ve only ever been to Le Mans for the Classic, and that was amazing. Haven’t been to Monza yet, but it’s in Italy so will be amazing as well. I’ve been to Zandvoort and Knockhill multiple times. I’ve been to Spa once and it was an organisational shitshow that made br*xit look like a masterclass in planning, and speaking to others I’m not alone in that experience. Maybe that’s why the fans don’t go to Spa?

I’ll have Eurosport on the telly all weekend. Looking forward to it.